Andy Roddick\u2019s journey back to tennis began during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Tennis Channel asked him to remotely appear on studio programming while the sports world was shut down. <\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t really play. I would come [to the U.S. Open] to do corporate work once a year, and that was it,\u201d Roddick recently told Sports Business Journal. \u201cTennis Channel was great because I could do it from home. My one thing was, I never wanted the game to control my geography ever again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Five years later \u2014 and 13 after announcing his retirement from play on his 30th birthday \u2014 Roddick has established a pillar of the tennis media ecosystem on his own terms with his \u201cServed\u201d podcast.<\/p>\n
Launched in January 2024 with veteran producer Mike Hayden and journalist Jon Wertheim, the show began with ambitions as simple as \u201ca fun side project that I thought no one would listen to,\u201d in Roddick\u2019s words. But since its debut, the show has garnered more than 150,000 YouTube subscribers, 185,000 social media followers and 3.5 million audio downloads while attracting marquee sponsors such as Amazon Prime (2025 French Open, U.S. Open), Mercury Financial (2025 Wimbledon) and ServiceNow (live shows at the upcoming Laver Cup) for events. It also joined Vox Media\u2019s network of sports podcasts last year.<\/p>\n
As it\u2019s grown, \u201cServed\u201d has earned bona fides with tennis diehards for long-form interviews with Rafael Nadal and Andre Agassi; laid-back but incisive analysis of tennis\u2019 entire calendar of events (not just the Grand Slams); and the versatility to dig deep into topics such as, in an early sitdown with longtime IMG Tennis agent\/executive Max Eisenbud, the economics of tennis player development.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat makes him special, specific to his podcast, is his ability to transcend the deep tennis insiders, but also the casual tennis fans,\u201d said Eric Butorac, a former doubles player on the ATP Tour and the USTA\u2019s senior director of player relations and business development. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s [Roddick] exactly like he was on tour. You walk into the locker room, and you just hope he\u2019s sitting there, because he\u2019s going to be jabbering away, super engaged, super competitive. \u2026 It\u2019s the same way when I turn on \u2018Served.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Served Media \u2014 the media company atop \u201cServed\u201d co-founded by Roddick and Hayden \u2014 is now a seven-figure revenue business. Since the debut of its eponymous podcast, it has launched a women\u2019s tennis-focused show hosted by Kim Clijsters, daily recap program hosted by Hayden, active social and newsletter channels, and a merchandise line, with yet-to-be disclosed plans for further content expansion.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe thought there would be a lane for it for, like, super nerds,\u201d Roddick said. \u201cBut I don\u2019t know that we thought it would grow like this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andy Roddick\u2019s journey back to tennis began during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Tennis Channel asked him to remotely…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,39932,82,593,63078,35298],"class_list":["post-111589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-print","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-upfront","tag-usta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}